Dalton, Tymber - Love and Brimstone [Brimstone Vampires 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (46 page)

She nodded, throwing her arms around him. After they took a shower, she followed him downstairs to eat.

* * * *

“I have something else for you,” Matthias said after breakfast. “A present I’ve been wanting to give you for a while.”

“What is it?”

He pushed back from the table and stood, holding his hand out to her. She took it, and he hooked his arm through hers. They walked outside and across the yard to the detached garage, where she knew he kept several other cars, separate from the ones garaged at the house.

Robertson and Albert followed. Matthias stopped before one of the closed garage bays. Robertson, she noted, held a remote control. Matthias stood behind her and gently put his hands over her eyes.

“Okay,” Matthias said.

She heard the door swing open, and then Matthias whispered in her ear, “I will give you anything you wish, my love. Anything within my power to give you.” Then he removed his hands.

In the garage was a 1965 Mustang coupe. Red.

Her heart skipped. “It looks like the one my dad used to have,” she said, walking into the garage and running her hand over the car.

She stooped down to look in the open driver’s side window. That was when she saw it—the small scratch in the center of the steering wheel, on the emblem. She remembered that scratch because she accidentally put it there with the key, remembered feeling horrible about doing it, when she was seventeen.

Turning, she saw Matthias’ proud smile. “Is it?”

Matthias nodded while Robertson beamed. “I told him when your dad wanted to sell it,” Robertson said. “He bought it, wanted to keep it for you.”

She felt the tears rolling down her face. Matthias put his arms around her. “I thought maybe you might want it, one day. If not, I knew I did.”

She squeezed him tightly, beyond words, knowing she could never love anyone as much as she loved that man at that moment in time.

When she wiped her eyes and regained her composure, she saw the blue ’68 in the next bay, back from California. Realization struck. “I asked you how long you’d owned it, and you said a few years.”

He shrugged.

“You bought it new, didn’t you?”

“How was I supposed to tell you that back then? It was the first one Bill Currie Ford received that year, down in Tampa. I paid extra for the privilege, just to have it.”

They went for a long drive in the ’65, Taz behind the wheel, and ended up in Tarpon Springs. He enjoyed giving her a tour of the quaint town. He took her to the Plaka Restaurant, a small Greek restaurant with excellent food. He even knew the owners, and she was welcomed like family.

It was a good feeling, something she never experienced before. Belonging.

She offered Matthias the keys for the return trip.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. “I trust you.”

She rested her hand on his thigh as they returned to his home. “When do we go back to LA?” she asked. “I know we have to go to London, to the Tribunal. But after that, what then?”

“I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“What?”

He glanced at her. “Would you mind staying here? Live here in Florida?”

“But you live in LA.”

“No. I was only out there to be close to you. I prefer it here. This is my home. If you want to live out there, we will. I will follow you wherever you wish to go.”

She watched the scenery through the windshield. It was different here in Florida than in California. She’d only been here a few times before this. And that was to Miami, which she heard was as different from most of Florida as LA was from California. It wasn’t like she had family or a bunch of friends tying her to the West Coast. Robertson was here. Matthias was here.

“If I don’t like it here?”

“Then we’ll be on the jet as soon as it takes us to pack.”

She considered it. “Okay. I’d like to see what it’s like then. Let’s stay here.”

He smiled. She knew he was happy but sensed he would do anything she asked no matter what it was. That scared and thrilled her.

* * * *

That night in bed, she snuggled close to him. “I’ve wanted to ask about your family, your parents.” She didn’t want to ask about his wife or children yet.

Did he tense a little?

“I had no siblings. My father was killed early in the Spanish Inquisition. My mother was killed years before, when I was a baby, during a fire. I don’t even remember her.”

“Were they both…”

“Of the line? Yes. I’ve often thought my father’s heart and soul died long before his body did, when he lost my mother.”

“Your grandparents?

“My mother’s parents died before I was born. I don’t remember much of what my father said about them. My father’s mother didn’t have as much of the line in her. She died from the Plague a few hundred years ago.”

“And your grandfather? How did he die?”

Matthias looked at her and swallowed hard. “I meant to tell you, but with all the confusion I forgot. He’s coming for a visit next week.”

THE END

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